Ceramic bodies are utilized for many purposes because of their resistance to wear, ease of handling, and the limitless number of design patterns which may be applied to the ceramic surfaces for enhancing the esthetic and beauty of the location in which they are installed. Ceramic bodies made in the form of wall tile, counter tile, and floor tile may be of any polygonal shape and may be glazed and fired so that the designs thereon are permanent.
Various apparatus and methods have been employed to decorate the surface of such ceramic bodies. The decorative surfaces may be made of different colors, different artistic patterns, of smooth planar surfaces, and of irregular surfaces, depending upon the location and the use of the ceramic tile. Various problems were encountered in the decoration of such ceramic tile surfaces in maintaining a selected design pattern without overlapping or crawling of one design area into an adjacent or contiguous design area to thereby change the esthetic effect of the selected design. Designs have been applied by hand painting, stencilling, stamping, silk-screening, bulbing, and numerous other methods. Some of the prior proposed methods which are relevant to the present invention include the marking of a design with an organic material such as a vegetable oil of low viscosity and absorbent, then sprinkling colored glass particulates some of which are coarse and some of which are fine on the vegetable oil and then firing the article to fuse the glass particulates with the body of the article. During the firing which accomplishes the fusing of the glass to the body, the organic vegetable oil was burnt off. See U.S. Pat. No. 1,531,613. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,089,782, multicolored decoration of a ceramic surface is provided by silk-screening on the surface a ceramic flux, inorganic ceramic pigments and a thermo-fluid vehicle consisting of a quick hardening wax and thermo-plastic resin when exposed to temperatures less than 100.degree. F., the vehicle being fluid between 100.degree. F. and 500.degree. F. and completely volatized at above 800.degree. F. Solidification below 100.degree. F. permitted the application by silk-screening of up to eight different colors before firing.
In U.S. Pat. No. 2,689,801 a thermo-plastic surface is covered with solid granular or particulate material by means of conveying heated particulate material by gas to the thermoplastic surface.
The application of granular or particulate material to provide a design on a surface to be decorated is also used in the manufacture of floor coverings employing a substrate or base of felt or other like material. See U.S. Pat. No. 334,483.
Prior proposed methods and products made thereby, with respect to a specific example of this invention, were not concerned with a granular composition and construction readily applied to a design on the surface to be decorated, the granules retaining their discreteness until fired, and then interacting with adhesive material to provide a design or pattern which maintains its integrity during firing.